One thing I don’t care that much anymore for is the word “realistic.” While it has it’s purposes — I should be a little more realistic in my goals to one day own a Aston Martin DB11, and should perhaps settle for a Honda CR-V or a Subaru Forester, or perhaps I should be more realistic in owning a 100″ telescope when my 6″ backyard scope still works — the word constrains, limits, shackles.

I was set off by a headline that read “high speed train more realistic than Elon Musk’s hyper-loop.” Perhaps more buildable for a municipality or state that needs mass transit right here and now, but why is more it more realistic?  Cause the tech isn’t ready yet?  Cause it might be expensive to design and engineer, even if the benefits outweigh the costs?

If defeating a large army and navy with centuries of training and success behind them, when you only had what amounted to a bunch of farmers and businessmen forming a guerrilla force, was realistic, would we be a nation?  Was defeating tyranny and fascism in the 1930’s and 1940’s a realistic goal when the only country that was ready at the start to take them on was a small island nation?  If taking a space program that was better known for having it’s early rockets blow up on launch and saying we would land on the moon within nine years depended on realism, would we have bothered to go?  Are human and civil rights realistic?  Is the protection of our natural resources, and our fellow Earth species, realistic?  Are adapting and changing rules and regulations to fight a changing climate and save as many lives and as much property as possible realistic?  Is saying we can’t have a fair economy, equal health care and education for all doomed to fail because it is not realistic?

If believing that your savior rose from the DEAD just three days after being nailed to a cross was realistic, would there be a Christianity?  Heck, if FAITH was realistic, would we have ANY religions?

“Be realistic.”  That short phrase should be tossed right out the window.  Dream.  Dream big.  Reach for the stars.  Go for it.  Do not be confined to the establishment and status quo.

Make the UN-realistic a reality.